


for a thousand years (and a thousand more)

by lewisandharold



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, I didn't even say Sophia's name, Lost Love, M/M, Perrie and Spohia are barely mentioned, Pining, at the end at least, i tried to write something poetic and painful and this is what I came up with, im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:32:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1474954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lewisandharold/pseuds/lewisandharold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were the ultimate love. A love that never was, and a love that was inevitable. </p>
<p>or, it takes a while before Liam and Zayn can love each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a thousand years (and a thousand more)

The end of the band wasn’t the end of them. They had ended long before that. Perhaps they had never really begun. But they never stopped crossing paths, even after the stage lights burned out.

xx

“I’m getting married,” Zayn says and he tries not to notice the way that Liam’s face drops. He didn’t have another choice. After all the years spent sitting in a cold and empty house, waiting for a person and a love that was never going to come, Zayn needed to pick himself up and move on as best as he knew how. There in that coffee shop which they sought after a chance encounter, clutching a warm cup, Zayn watched as Liam straightened his back and manufactured a smile. 

“That’s great, Zayn. Congratulations. I hear that Perrie is a lovely woman,” Liam says and he knows that his voice is strained and part of him wants that to be noticed. He only wants to suffer in partial silence because he knows he doesn’t have any right to suffer at all. It was his choice to look away from Zayn from the beginning and the repercussions were his cross to carry. He still tells himself that the bright lights and camera flashes are what blinded him to the love he could have had. But there are still times when Liam would be driving down an empty street in a quiet car and realize that his wounds were and are self-inflicted. Zayn looks at him from miles away, across the small table, in the air that smells of warm coffee, and he gives a little nod acknowledge Liam’s false joy. 

It is not until Liam stares into his own tear-stained reflection when he arrives home after Zayn’s wedding that he lets himself be crushed by the weight of his own mistakes. Before then, he could fool himself into believing at a miraculous catalyst would materialize to push he and Zayn together in a brilliant display of love, affection, and fate. But not anymore. Zayn belonged to somebody else now, and he deserved that. He deserved to be happy and to make a home for his heart in a fine woman like Perrie. There was no more pretending for Liam. He found himself curled up on the floor of his too-big shower, knees to his chest in an effort to hold his guts in his body when he felt like he was going to split open, and he felt both too young and too old for the pain he felt. The water ran cold. 

xx

“It’s a boy,” Liam said. Zayn stared down at the swollen belly of the gorgeous woman holding nervously to Liam’s elbow. Liam’s blush was lost on his cheeks which were already flushed in the chill of the London evening. Zayn’s breath puffed out unevenly for a moment too long before he pulled back his lips in what was meant to be a smile, but Liam could see it for the grimace that it was.

“Wow. When are you due?” Zayn asked, turning his attention to Liam’s wife. He didn’t catch the answer. Liam never invited Zayn to the wedding. Zayn know he wouldn’t have gone anyway. He would have made an excuse because he wouldn’t be able to handle seeing Liam at another wedding that wasn’t theirs. Zayn focused his eyes on where Liam’s lips were forming words in the most beautiful way. They stopped moving then, and Zayn realized that he was meant to be having a conversation. 

He went home that night to the woman he married, the woman he loved. He read a book by the fire to the little girl with olive skin and bright blue eyes that was the center of his universe and let tears fall because she would never know the man that used to be the center. When she tried to dry his cheeks, he smiled because someday soon Liam might know the happiness of loving a woman and a child, even if it was less than the perfect life he himself expected. 

xx

“She left me for another man,” Zayn told him when they met again on the street. A different street. Liam took him into the warmth of his embrace and wept with him because he never wanted to see pain in any incarnation on his love’s face. The lights were drawn low later that night, flickering like the flame between them, no more than a candle, slow burning and steady in the surrounding darkness. They lay there in the house Zayn had tried so desperately to fill, listening to the emptiness beyond the bedroom. 

In the morning, Liam returned to his family and all Zayn really wanted to do was build his own family with Liam because maybe it could be one that would last.

xx

“There was an accident,” Liam choked, “and I need you now.” They wept together once more and understood that there could possibly be a something finally, after all of these years. But there was still too much hurt, too much pain in their hearts. They couldn’t go back to the same love they had before, when they were young and bright and on top of the world. They couldn’t have the same love they had when they were light-years apart and living separate lives. They couldn’t have anything together then, except shared turmoil there on Liam’s plush sofa on a sunny Wednesday that felt an awful lot like a stormy Sunday.

In the evening, Zayn went home to hold his daughter tight, and brush the tangles from her long hair because watching somebody lose everything makes Zayn remember when the same thing happened to him.

xx

It was later that Liam found Zayn sitting on a park bench eating a flaky pastry and sipping what Liam knew would be an exotic tea from a paper cup. He stood back for a moment, deciding how to approach him after all these years. He decided to maneuver around Zayn and come up behind him. He felt the fall leaves crunch beneath his feet as the soles of his shoes pressed into the ground. Zayn much have heard his approach, but he didn't turn around.

Liam lifted his hands and let them hover in the air near Zayn’s head. He didn’t want to scare him. But he wanted to see if Zayn would remember his touch and recognize it even if he didn’t know it was Liam.

Liam laid his hands on Zayn’s shoulders. He feels Zayn sigh beneath them and a small, almost choked laugh came along as well.

“Liam.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I saw you down the street before you walked into that shop,” Zayn said simply. 

“Why didn’t you come say anything?”

Zayn smiled, “because it was your turn. I found you before. You found me now.” Liam leaned around Zayn and put his weight on the back of the bench to meet Zayn’s eyes with a slightly confused expression. A tingling started at the backs of Liam’s knees and suddenly he needed the park bench to keep him up. He sat down. 

Liam studied the crow’s feet pushed deep beside brown eyes that seemed to have lightened with age and also something indiscernible that came from inside. Zayn spread his lips to reveal his familiar smile, a real smile, a special one that only Liam got to see. Liam had been through so much in the past ten years and Zayn could see it written all over his face and in the soft scar on his left cheekbone. But he could see the past disappearing before his very eyes as Liam breathed in his smile and planted one on his face in return.

They sat there for a long moment, just studying each other. Although Liam did not see a rebellious young man with an ache for something unknown sitting beside him just then, he could still see the reminiscent tattoos where his sweater sleeve was rolled up. Zayn set down his tea on the open side of the park bench and extended his arm on the backrest behind Liam, who took the opportunity to slide a little closer and press their sides together. Liam smiled as a knee bumped his own and he bumped back in return, just like when they were young. There was an ease to this meeting which had been absent for too long. 

The distant squeal of a child on the nearby playground made the pair of them turn their heads in unison, instinct. Liam's view was partially obstructed by where Zayn's hand was hanging off of his shoulder and he noticed a tiny spot of ink where there wasn't before. The L printed on the middle knuckle of Zayn’s pinky looked darker than the rest of his fading tattoos. It looked new. Liam grabbed Zayn’s hand in both of his own and tugged it above his head, bringing his entire arm out from behind his neck. He looked from the tattoo up to Zayn with a questioning look.

“Zayn, what is this for?”

“I got it yesterday. I wasn’t sure why, but I just felt like I should. And I guess now I know why,” Zayn paused and looked out over the park, admiring the colors painted by autumn. “Liam, I think it's time. I can feel it.”

And for the first time, Liam could proudly say he felt it too. The string that had tied them together their whole lives was getting shorter and shorter and they knew it. They had lived entire lives in the last ten years, but now they would live new ones. A breeze carried small leaves down from the branches above as Liam took off his mitten and put his hand, palm up, in the air. Zayn looked at it with a small smile for a moment before he slid his own hand on top and laced their fingers together.

xx

There was no more pain in their hearts; there was only room for love. They had come to know themselves and in that knowing, they could accept the knowing of each other. 

They found themselves in a big house with a butter cream kitchen and Zayn’s girl and Liam’s boy and two more little ones that belonged to the pair of them. There were children stretched out in the golden patches of sunlight on the carpet in the afternoon sun. Eggs and bacon and toast in the mornings, wafting through the air and waking the house up. Muddy boots by the door after a rainy day spent puddle jumping. A house became a home which was permeated by the presence of an old and well-aged love and the sounds of laughter over a big oak dinner table and the clinking of wine glasses to celebrate achievements. 

When the house was quiet and the moon loomed above, Liam would lay Zayn out on the bed and unravel him until he found his very core. There, in the hush of the night between the sheets of a bed they were glad to call theirs, Liam planted his love in Zayn’s heart with gentle fingers and soft lips. Because after all the time they spent apart, yearning for the other, they had time to be together now. Liam could open Zayn up, body and soul, and creep inside his bones, where he had been all along. He was right back where Zayn had put him all those years ago, except now he wanted to be there. Zayn let him live there underneath his skin, rushing like blood and adrenaline through his veins. 

As they finally lay down to sleep, Liam was struck by how many years he had waited to be exactly where he was, and how many years he had to be alone to understand that Zayn was right there beside him. And yet, it was so easy to feel like he was a million miles away again. He had run away for so long that he lamented the disappearance of the boy he first fell in love with. But the person that Zayn had become was even more captivating, and Liam wished he had been there to witness this fine man rise from the ashes Liam left behind when he denied his affections. 

“Zayn,” he whispered.

“Yes, Liam?”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

They were on the same page. They were finally living in harmony again.


End file.
